WWI ARMENIAN GENOCIDE US AMBASSADOR TURKISH OTTOMAN EMPIRE AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED

Description

HENRY MORGENTHAU, SR.
(1856 - 1946)
WORLD WAR I UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE TURKISH OTTOMAN EMPIRE DURING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
- APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT WILSON 1913-1916
Morgenthau was one of the most prominent Americans who spoke out about the Armenian Genocide of which he states, “I am firmly convinced that this is the greatest crime of the ages.”
The
Armenian genocide
was the systematic mass murder of around one million ethnic
Armenians
in the
Ottoman Empire
during
World War I
. Spearheaded by the ruling
Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP), it was accomplished primarily through mass executions,
death marches
leading to the
Syrian Desert
, and the forced Islamization of Armenian women and children.
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HERE’S AN AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED BY MORGENTHAU ON HIS “MR. HENRY MORGENTHAU” CALLING CARD.
HE WRITES:
“Yours truly,
Henry Morgenthau”
WRITTEN BENEATH MORGENTHAU’S SIGNATURE, IN ANOTHER HAND, ARE THE WORDS, “
Dean of American Economics life-Banker-Lawyer
”
The DOCUMENT MEASURES 3” x 1-3/8 AND IS IN VERY GOOD+ CONDITION.
A GREAT PIECE OF WWI DIPLOMATIC HISTORY.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE HONORABLE
HENRY MORGENTHAU, SR.
Henry
Morgenthau
(
26 April 1856–25 November 1946
),
US diplomat
and lawyer, was born in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Lazarus Morgenthau, a cigar manufacturer, and Babette Guggenheim. After his business failed, Lazarus Morgenthau immigrated to the United States in 1866 and became an insurance salesman. Henry Morgenthau attended public high school, graduating in 1870, the same year he entered the City College of New York. He remained there only one year before financial pressures compelled him to work. Employed as an errand boy at a law firm, Morgenthau slowly learned the business, becoming expert in title searches and mortgage foreclosure sales. In 1875 he quit his job to enter Columbia Law School, supporting himself by teaching at night. He graduated in 1877 and was admitted to the bar.
Along with two friends, Morgenthau founded the law firm of Lachman, Morgenthau and Goldsmith in 1879. He focused on real estate transactions, at which he became extremely successful. In 1883 he married Josephine Sykes; they had four children, one of whom,
Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
, became secretary of the Treasury under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
. Morgenthau, Sr., left the law firm to found the Central Realty Bond and Trust Company in 1899 and the Henry Morgenthau Company in 1905, both of which dealt in real estate. In 1913 Morgenthau closed both of his businesses and devoted himself to public service.
Morgenthau was an active philanthropist and social lobbyist. A Reform Jew, he in 1907 helped found and acted as first president of the Free Synagogue. Radically opposed to the Orthodox emphasis on religion, the Free Synagogue was more concerned with broad-based community service. He worked on the Committee on Congestion of the Population (1908), which advocated tenement reform, and the Committee of Safety (1911), which was formed in reaction to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire and lobbied for improved industrial safety laws. In 1911 he founded the Bronx House, a settlement and music school, and was a lifelong patron of the Metropolitan Opera. A supporter of
Woodrow Wilson
, Morgenthau donated over ,000 to Wilson’s presidential campaign in 1911–1912 and served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s finance committee in 1912.
President Wilson appointed Morgenthau ambassador to Turkey in 1913. Morgenthau was untrained in diplomacy, and the position was initially difficult for him. His most laudable action in office was in foreseeing the looming isolation of Jewish settlers in Palestine with the onset of the First World War, and he obtained ,000 from the American Jewish Committee to prevent their starvation. After Great Britain, France, Russia, and the other Allied countries broke off diplomatic relations with Turkey when the latter entered the war in October 1914, Morgenthau was left as the only western ambassador in the country, and he was overwhelmed by demands for evacuation and help. He handled the situation with such tact that he was decorated by the British and French governments for service to their nationals and was also offered a cabinet post by Turkey. Morgenthau resigned his ambassadorship in 1916, sickened by the Turkish slaughter of Armenians. He returned to the United States to increase public awareness and to raise funds for Armenian relief. He also served on President Wilson’s reelection campaign. In June 1917 he was sent on a secret mission to negotiate a separate peace between Turkey and the Allies. This mission was prematurely aborted under pressure from Britain and Zionists, who feared the compromising of their own interests.
Morgenthau was involved in many subsequent international diplomacy and relief efforts. In February 1919 he was part of a speaking tour to promote U.S. membership in the League of Nations; in March of that year he was a delegate in Cannes at the conference for the creation of the International Red Cross; he advised on Turkish questions at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; he served on the Harbord Commission (1919), which recommended American policy on Armenia; and he was vice chairman (1919–1921) of the Armenian Relief Committee, later the Near East Relief, Inc. President Wilson used him frequently as an emissary abroad. Morgenthau traveled to Poland in the summer of 1919 at Wilson’s behest to investigate the persecution of Jews. The president appointed him ambassador to Mexico in 1920, but because of turmoil in the country his appointment was not confirmed by Congress. He chaired the League of Nations Refugee Resettlement Commission in Athens, which was faced with the problem of 1.25 million Greeks who had been summarily expelled from Turkey. Their successful resettlement was one of Morgenthau’s greatest achievements, and he recounted the story in his memoir,
I Was Sent to Athens
(1929).
Morgenthau’s political involvement continued into his old age. He was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal and served as technical delegate to the World Monetary and Economic Conference in London in 1933. Morgenthau died at his home in New York City.
Bibliography
Morgenthau’s papers are in the Library of Congress. His autobiography,
All in a Lifetime
(1922), and his account of his diplomatic service in Turkey,
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
(1918), are excellent sources of information on his life. Information on Morgenthau’s family, including his son Henry Morgenthau, Jr., is in Henry Morgenthau III,
Mostly Morgenthaus
(1991). Information on Morgenthau’s involvement in the Wilson administration and international diplomacy and relief is in William F. McCombs,
Making Woodrow Wilson President
(1921); Josephus Daniels,
The Wilson Era
(2 vols., 1944–1946); and James L. Barton,
The Story of Near East Relief
(1930). An obituary is in the
New York Times
, 26 Nov. 1946. [Source: American National Biography]
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